One of the “sweetest” things bakery owners can do for their operation is to invest in the right bakery POS system. Such a system makes business a piece of cake by:
Helping to up-sell and cross-sell bakery items.
Up-selling and cross-selling bakery products are great ways to make profits rise, but employees don’t always remember to try to do so while assisting customers. However, a bakery POS system can be configured to remind staff members to engage in suggestive selling as they ring up sales. With the technology at their fingertips, staff members working at the counter will, for example, have no difficulty proposing that a customer who is buying a small cake purchase a slightly larger one instead, or that an individual who orders freshly sliced bread for sandwiches take home a few cookies or cupcakes for dessert. A bakery POS system also supports up-selling and cross-selling when advertisements and/or color images touting different baked goods are captured in the software and featured prominently on integrated customer-facing point of sale displays.
Helping to build customer relationships.
A good bakery POS system allows operators to record and track customers’ purchase histories and preferences, yielding better insight into patrons’ shopping behavior. The more knowledge bakery owners have about each consumer who patronizes his or her store(s), the more easily they can engage customers and forge relationships with them by adding a personal touch to the shopping experience. For instance, if information captured by and maintained in the bakery POS system shows that Mrs. Smith favors chocolate, clerks can make certain to invite her to taste new chocolate items because they know it’s her preferred flavor. Mrs. Smith will then feel a closer tie to the bakery and go there whenever baked goods are on her shopping list.
Allowing easy creation and tracking of custom orders.
Using a paper-based system to build special orders for wedding cakes, birthday cakes, and any other custom item opens the door for errors. It also makes it difficult to track the availability of all elements needed to produce the item (e.g., for a wedding cake, wedding cake toppers, special decorations, etc.) and to ensure that all of the steps involved—including the scheduling of the baking and, if applicable, the delivery—are properly completed. By contrast, a bakery POS eliminates the need to decipher handwritten notes and lets you keep all the necessary information pertaining to each special order information in one place, for a hassle-free experience every time.
Facilitating inventory management and reducing waste.
Running out of or short on any raw ingredient does not bode well for bakeries. Customers want what they want when they want it, and if it’s unavailable because of an ingredient shortage, they may not return to the shop no matter how much they like the goodies sold there. And if they do purchase something else the first time their favorite item is unavailable—e.g., strawberry Danish instead of cherry Danish—the most laid-back consumers may eventually take their business elsewhere. The inventory control module of a bakery POS keeps customers happy and supports strong sales by letting you set minimum inventory levels, generating warnings about imminent shortages and, in some cases, automatically creating re-orders based on user-defined parameters.
Just as significant, raw ingredient waste is eliminated or minimized when historical data kept in the bakery POS system is used as the basis for determining raw order quantities. With a bakery POS, you will never find yourself with rotting eggs or spoiled cream because you purchased too large a quantity of each item to consume before its expiration date.
Yielding back office efficiencies.
Your bakery POS system can make the back office as efficient as the front end by enabling several back office capabilities. In addition to inventory management, these include order generation, labor scheduling (based on traffic and sales patterns) and management, and sales reporting and reconciliation. For best results, you’ll need to purchase a separate computer terminal to perform back office functions.
Food trends, including bakery trends, will come and go. But a good bakery POS system is an essential tool that will never go out of style.
